III. 1 RADIOCAREON DATING AND EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY* Sturt W Mann ing i. Intr oducti on: Histo ry if Field In the beginning, the histarical chronology of Egyp t was held to offer a test for the utili ty of the radiocarbon dating method; rneasurements were thus run on several ancient Egyptian samples and the ability to ach ieve ages relatively close to the hista rical age d cmonstrated that radiocarbon daring worked in approximate terms (or was not reasonable credence'). Egypti an sampl es thus comp rised part of the origin al 'curve of knowns ' publi shed in Arnold and Libby" to show that the radio carbon method worked, app roximately, over the Iast several thousand years. Ov er the next few dec ad es a numb er of radioc arbon ages were obt ain ed on Egypti an sam plcs. Egypti an chro nology co ntinued to be considered as the known age, and radiocarbon was compa red- tested. Radiocarbon technology through the 1960s was not capable of delivering ages of sufficient accuracy or precision to be of actual util- ity to Egyptologists." In 1970 Save-Söderbergh and ül sson published a well th ought out critical an alysis of radiocarbon dates from Egypt." Th ey highlighted problems of poor association samples and presumed histarical context (or age), of contarnination, and of the need * T he final text of this pap er was submitted 19 August 2003. Th e paper employs the then standard IntCal98 radiocarbon calibration dataset. A new IntCal04 dataset has since publi shed in ea rly 2005 ( Radioearbon vol. 46(3), 2004). Use of the new da taset would ma ke only sma ll a nd fairly insignifica nt cha nges to the figu rcs and discussions in this paper. For a comparison of the two calibration curves for the period 500-35 00 BC , see Figure III. 1.6 at the end of this paper. i vV. F. Libby, "Arehaeology and radiocarbon dating", Radiocarbon Tl. (1980), 1017-1020. 2 J. R. Arnold & W. F. Libby, "Age determinations by radiocarbon content: checks with sarnples of known age", Science 1 LO (1949), 678-680. 3 H. S. Smith, "Egypt and C 14 dating", Ant iquity 38 (1964), 32-37. , T . Save-S ödc rbergh & I. U. O lsson, "C 14 datin g and Egyptian chronology", in: I. U. O lsson, ed., Radiocarbon and absolute chronology (Stockholm, 1970), 50 i - 511.
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